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Civ II game a decade old

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Re: Civ II game a decade old

#21

Post by CharlieA »

nathan_long wrote: post #14
CharlieA wrote: post #5

The 3-way division of the world into "super-continents" and the constant war keeping the populace in a perpetual state of starvation and poverty, with the entire world in disrepair is so incredibly reminiscent of Orwell's 1984 it's scary. If you haven't read 1984, it's a startlingly bleak view of a potential future (from a historical perspective, but still applicable today, I think) particularly through technology an…

>> democracy is a less effective system because it's holding back the decision making process... seemingly very little real progress... we have... generally nothing really significant ... to complain about. This mystifies me: people sometimes talk about legislative gridlock as though it's all bad. Do you measure the quality of a development team by the number of lines of code they produce? Of course not. The developm…

I take your point, in part, and I don't necessarily disagree with you, because by and large the system does work. But (to use your analogy) when it comes to the law-making branch of government we have this massive sprawling "codebase" and it doesn't necessarily need a lot of new code (laws) putting in place, but rather, there's a lot of cruft and old legacy stuff that maybe needs to be removed or updated, and the time it takes to get things done is just incredibly slow, which can lead to a lot of frustration for a lot of people. While on the whole that may not actually be such a bad thing, as you rightly point out ("...law needs broad consensus and relatively few are passed...") it strikes me that the attitudes of many people (even myself, on occasion) are strikingly similar to the OP's in the excerpt I highlighted wherein due to a perceived inefficiency of government (rightly or wrongly) we may come to the conclusion that the best course of action is to abandon the democratic process in favor of something which addresses these inefficiencies...which in itself leads to...well...that's the scary part... I suppose. In a game of Civilization it's not a big deal. In reality...

My only real problem with the representative system of democracy generally, is the way we have to proxy our voting authority through our political leaders. It just seems archaic and ludicrous for a region of people (sometimes many hundreds of thousands of people) to have to boil down their political ideologies to a single "best fit" candidate. Even ignoring the potential for corruption, personal motivations, hidden biases etc. you've simplified thousands of separate beliefs on an equal number of issues, social, economic, all, into ONE PERSONS' beliefs and worst of all...that person then has a legitimate claim to believe that they're representing the people.

I suppose it's the difference between a politician believing that they're a "representation" of the people of the electorate, OR a "representative" of those voters. I think most politicians consider themselves the former, and I think that's a mistake.

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#22

Post by lotharbot »

nathan_long wrote: post #14
CharlieA wrote: post #5

The 3-way division of the world into "super-continents" and the constant war keeping the populace in a perpetual state of starvation and poverty, with the entire world in disrepair is so incredibly reminiscent of Orwell's 1984 it's scary. If you haven't read 1984, it's a startlingly bleak view of a potential future (from a historical perspective, but still applicable today, I think) particularly through technology an…

>> democracy is a less effective system because it's holding back the decision making process... seemingly very little real progress... we have... generally nothing really significant ... to complain about. This mystifies me: people sometimes talk about legislative gridlock as though it's all bad. Do you measure the quality of a development team by the number of lines of code they produce? Of course not. The developm…

One of the reasons the US has a divided Congress is to induce gridlock. This was a design goal.

Remember, government is other people making rules for you. The more efficient they are at changing the rules, the riskier it is for you to do just about anything. The more efficient they are at changing the rules, the more likely they'll take an extreme position on a contentious subject.

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#23

Post by mertd »

Paul_S wrote: post #9

If you disable the space race as a winning condition the chance of a nuclear holocaust over time approaches 1. I'm not saying there are any lessons to be had from it. It's only a game.

After completing "Future Technology #532", spamming nukes is the only interesting thing left to do in the game.

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#24

Post by mynameishere »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #16
radical_cut wrote: post #12

Well that gave me goosebumps. Bleak future indeed, I immediately thought of the Doomsday Clock. I like the idea of a new subreddit spawned by this: http://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar . It could be interresting to see if anybody finds a way to save the world from hell. Maybe it's time to relive good old memories of times spend with old Civ games. :)

It would be interesting if he exported the game state, so other people could try resolving the conflict.

The game is easy and boring in the end. He's purposely letting it go on and on.

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#25

Post by lars_francke »

danso wrote: post #18

I love Civ 2, but how is it that the OP can't win against two AIs? They weren't geniuses, AFAIK. And though the AI was vicious early on, it never seemed competent at the end. And even if it were, it's hard to imagine that the AI could adapt to a focused, determined attack by a human player (taking one city at a time).

If you read the linked thread you'll find out why.

First of all the game was technically won thousands of years back but he kept playing. And now they are in a stalemate that no one can break.

His thread is basically all about asking for help (and fresh ideas) to end this.

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#26

Post by Toenex »

I'm not suggesting that civ is anyway up to the task but in all seriousness does any government systematically simulate policy decisions? I can't even remember a UK policy decision that even acknowledge the possibility it might not be a complete success let alone suggested criteria by which it should be ultimately evaluated.

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#27

Post by radical_cut »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #16
radical_cut wrote: post #12

Well that gave me goosebumps. Bleak future indeed, I immediately thought of the Doomsday Clock. I like the idea of a new subreddit spawned by this: http://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar . It could be interresting to see if anybody finds a way to save the world from hell. Maybe it's time to relive good old memories of times spend with old Civ games. :)

It would be interesting if he exported the game state, so other people could try resolving the conflict.

That's one of the main points of the new subreddit I've linked to. From the original thread:

  >> We just need the savegame...
  > (original author) I'll upload it this evening when I get home
So we just have to wait.

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#28

Post by doktrin »

This was interesting as a simulation cum case study, but rather miserable as far as gaming goes.

There is no way a game of Civ II isn't eminently beatable - militarily or otherwise.

For one thing, there's no excuse to not operate as a Fundamentalism (0 population unrest) late game. Virtually all other forms of government, particularly Democracy, are an annoying cavalcade of civil unrest late game.

I enjoyed the read. It really brought me back in time to playing this game with fervent addiction in middle school.

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#29

Post by damon_c »

danso wrote: post #18

I love Civ 2, but how is it that the OP can't win against two AIs? They weren't geniuses, AFAIK. And though the AI was vicious early on, it never seemed competent at the end. And even if it were, it's hard to imagine that the AI could adapt to a focused, determined attack by a human player (taking one city at a time).

On the higher levels, specifically Deity, it seems that there are some variables set in the AI's favor that go beyond normal game play manipulations... Or maybe I am just misdiagnosing my own failures :(

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#30

Post by Shivetya »

CharlieA wrote: post #5

The 3-way division of the world into "super-continents" and the constant war keeping the populace in a perpetual state of starvation and poverty, with the entire world in disrepair is so incredibly reminiscent of Orwell's 1984 it's scary. If you haven't read 1984, it's a startlingly bleak view of a potential future (from a historical perspective, but still applicable today, I think) particularly through technology an…

and yet much of science fiction that many us enjoy consistently reflects a much better possible future, as this 2011 article details http://lfs.org/newsletter/029/04/Somin.shtml

If anything technology offered just as many avenues for people to escape a totalitarian world as to succumb to it.

With regards to this guy's game, it probably brings reminders of all the silliness with regards to Civilization game. From melting icecaps to near constant nuclear war its a sign of an AI that that too easily bounces from one extreme to another.

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